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THE TALE 

OF 

THE SPINNING-WHEEL 



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THE TALE 



OF THE 



SPINNING-WHEEL 



BY 



ELIZABETH CYNTHIA BARNEY BUEL 

Regent "Mary Floyd Tallmadge Chapter," Daughters 
of the American Revolution 



ILLUSTRATED BY 

EMILY NOYES VANDERPOEL 

AUTHOR OF "COLOR PROBLEMS" AND "CHRONICLES 
OF A PIONEER SCHOOL " 



LITCHFIELD, CONNECTICUT 
MCMIII 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Cof<^B Reobveb 

NOV/ 23 196® 

COPYWOHT ENTRY 

OLASS^ XXo, Wo 






Copyright, 1903, by 
Elizabeth Cynthia Barney Buel 



UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON 
AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. 



DEDICATED 

IN GRATEFUL AFFECTION 

TO 

THE MARY FLOYD TALLMADGE CHAPTER 

DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN 

REVOLUTION 

WHOSE READY SYMPATHY AND ENTHUSIASM 

HAVE NEVER FAILED IN WORK FOR 

" HOME AND COUNTRY " 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

THE Tale of the Spinning- Wheel is 
revised and enlarged from a paper 
read before the Litchfield Historical 
Society, Litchfield, Connecticut ; New Eng- 
land Society in the City of New York, 
Waldorf-Astoria, New York City ; Mary 
Floyd Tallmadge Chapter, D. A. R., Litch- 
field ; Judea Chapter, D. A.R., Washington, 
Connecticut ; Massachusetts Society of the 
Colonial Dames of America, Boston ; Kath- 
erine Gaylord Chapter, D. A. R., Bristol, 
Connecticut ; Connecticut Society of the 
Colonial Dames of America, New Haven, 
and also in Hartford ; Denver Chapter, 
D. A. R., Denver, Colorado ; Warren and 

Prescott Chapter, D. A. R., Boston, Massa- 

vii 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

chusetts ; Orford Parish Chapter, D. A. R., 
South Manchester, Connecticut ; National 
Arts Club, New York; Esther Stanley 
Chapter, D. A. R., New Britain, Connec- 
ticut ; Annual Spring Conference, Connec- 
ticut D. A. R., at Middletown ; Dorothy 
Ripley Chapter, D. A. R., Southport, Con- 
necticut ; Wiltwyck Chapter, D. A. R., 
Kingston, New York ; Litchfield Club, 
Litchfield, Connecticut, etc., etc. 



Vlll 



THE TALE OF 

THE SPINNING-WHEEL 



" Queens of Homespun, out of whom we draw 
our royal lineage." — Horace Bushnell. 



THE TALE OF 

THE SPINNING-WHEEL 

THE spinning-wheel — symbol of the dig- 
nity of woman's labor. — What wealth 
of memory gathers around the homely im- 
plement, homely indeed in the good old 
sense of the word — because belonging to 
the home. Home-made and home-spun are 
honorable epithets, replete with significance, 
for in them we find the epitome of the lives 
and labors of our foremothers. The plough 
and the axe are not more symbolic of the 
winning of this country from the wilder- 
ness, nor the musket of the winning of its 
freedom, than is the spinning-wheel in wom- 
an's hands the symbol of both. So sym- 
bolic is it also of woman's toil, of woman's 
distinctive and universal occupation, nay, 
of woman herself, that the " distaff side 
of the house" has always been expressive of 
the woman's family, and "spinster" is still 
the legal title of unmarried women in the 
common law of England. Most ancient of 
all household implements, it has been used 

3 



THE TALE OF 

in one form or another by queen, princess, 
and serving-maid, by farmer's wife and 
noble's daughter, until it stands to-day a 
silent witness to the fundamental democracy 
of mankind. 

" When Adam delved and Eve span, 
Where was then the gentleman ? " 

The mutual dependence of spinning and 
agriculture, of woman's work and man's, is 
also strikingly illustrated by a carving on an 
old sarcophagus in the Church of St. John 
Lateran in Rome, depicting the Eternal 
Father giving to Adam an instrument of 
tillage, and to Eve a distaff and spindle. 
Thus, coeval with man's first appearance on 
this earth, no written page of history, no 
musty parchment or sculptured stone, is so 
old that we cannot find upon it some traces 
of the spindle and distaff with their tale of 
joys and sorrows spun into the thread by the 
fingers of patient women whose hearts beat 
as our own to-day, in tune with the common 
throb of humanity. Though we may strain 
our eyes into the darkness of prehistoric 
ages, when primeval woman used the tree- 

4 



THE SPINNING-WHEEL 

trunk of the forest for a distaff, we will 
still find there some evidence of the use of 
flax and hemp for threads and ropes. Even 
in the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, be- 
longing to the Stone Age, we see their use 
in various ways — in the fishing lines and 




nets, in the cords for carrying heavy ves- 
sels, and in the ropes necessary to the 
erection of these very lake-dwellings them- 
selves. " Rough or unworked flax," says 
Keller, "is found in the lake-dwellings 
made into bundles, or what are technically 
called heads, and ... it was perfectly clean 
and ready for use." 

Stepping across the threshold of history, 
we learn that sixty-five centuries ago there 
lived in Egypt a king of the recently dis- 
covered first dynasty, who, as his name, 
Merneit-Ata, signifies, put his trust in the 
goddess Neith, the all-sustaining mother of 

5 



THE TALE OF 

the universe; and in his tomb to-day has 
been found a large upright slab, five feet 
high, whereon are carved the emblems of 
this goddess — two arrows crossed on an 
upright distaff. Here, in the dim morning 
of history, we find the distaff already honored 
as the sacred symbol of this feminine divin- 
ity, in whose eternal motherhood the Egyp- 
tians vaguely recognized that mysterious 
Power from which all things proceed. This 
was no prehistoric age of barbarism, for in 
the University Museum in London are now 
to be seen the relics of this long lost first 
dynasty, unearthed at Abydos within the last 
four years by Dr. Flinders Petrie — relics 
of a civilization already far advanced. We 
stand face to face with their weapons of war 
and of the chase, their household imple- 
ments, their exquisitely carved ivories and 
gold jewelry and coin, their very clothing of 
fine linen, the work of the spinsters of those 
days, and the brain reels with the thought 
that even before them there were generations 
upon generations of human beings living in 
organized societies and practising the arts 
and engaged in the occupations of a high 

6 



THE SPINNING-WHEEL 

order of civilized life. The whole course 
of the first dynasty is now laid bare to us, 
and we find that its beginning in 4700 b. c. 
is modern history compared with the periods 
of development that must have gone before, 
for there is proof positive that even before 
this dynasty, ten other kings reigned in 
E^ypt, and other hands grew flax on the 
banks of the Nile and spun and wove it into 
Egypt's far-famed linen. In ancient Egypt 
linen occupied a most important place; it 
was worn by all classes, alive or dead, and 
it was the only material that the priestly 
orders were allowed to wear. We have 
all seen the beautiful mummy linen found" 
wrapped around the mummies even of the 
most remote antiquity ; and we know that 
only the best that Egypt could produce 
would be wound around the sacred bodies 
of their dead. This mummy-linen was not 
spun on a wheel, but on a hand-distaff, called 
sometimes a rock, such as the women of 
India use to this day in spinning the fine 
thread of India muslin, and such as was 
also used by the children of our American 
colonists while tending sheep and cattle in 

7 




THE TALE OF 

the field. The spinning-wheel as we know 
it is of much later date. It does not appear 
until the fifteenth century, — although the 
date of the first wool- wheel is placed by one 
authority in the four- 
teenth century, — before 
which time all spinning 
of wool, flax, and cot- 
ton was done on the 
primitive distaff tucked 
under the left arm in 
the way so familiar to 
Wotiiqh qnmi iUQ. H* cnrtum us in pi cture s of peas- 

^ ant girls and Greek 
maidens spinning as they walk. Woman's 
first distaff was the trunk of a tree ; her 
spindle a rude stick, on which she wound 
and twisted the yarn as her fingers labori- 
ously pulled and shaped it from the flax 
wrapped around the trunk. From this dis- 
taff of nature it was but a step to the man- 
ufactured distaff of history. This distaff 
was a staff about three feet long ; the lower 
end was held between the left arm and the 
side ; the upper end was wrapped with 
the material to be spun. The thread was 

8 



THE SPINNING-WHEEL 



passed through, and guided by, the fingers 
of the left hand, and was drawn and twisted 
by those of the right, and wound on the 
suspended spindle, made so as to be revolved 
like a top, which completed the twist by its 
own impetus and weight. The illustration 
shows a distaff of the fifteenth century sup- 
ported by a rude stand, leaving the left arm 
free to hold the spindle. In this slow and 
simple fashion the clothing of all the world 
was spun before the fifteenth century, and 
still is spun to-day in many lands. The 
spinning-wheel simply took the distaff as 
it was, and attached a wheel and treadle to 
revolve the spindle ; and 
the vast machines of 
modern industry merely 
elaborate and multiply 
into many spindles this 
simple device of previous 
ages. The principle re- 
mains absolutely the same, 
so much so that we may 
say that from tree- 
trunk to modern factory 
the methods of preparing 

9 VNomoft spivraincj 
IS 1 - ccnUwj 




^ 



THE TALE OF 

and spinning flax have changed the least of 
all the industries, the sculptures of ancient 
Egypt depicting processes which are easily 
recognizable as those practised to-day not 
only in Egypt, but also by the modern Finn, 
Lapp, Norwegian, and Belgian flax-grower. 
The paintings in the grotto of El Kab show 
the pulling, stocking, tying, and rippling of 
flax just as it is done in Egypt now ; and 
our own colonists of a hundred years ago 
followed precisely the same methods as the 
Egyptian, who preceded him in the world's 
history by sixty-five hundred years. Pliny's 
description of Egyptian flax-culture and 
preparation reads like an account of the 
labors of our own foremothers ; and the 
walls of ancient tombs are covered with 
pictures of the old familiar process. Egyp- 
tian flax went to all parts of the world and 
occupied a foremost place as an article of 
commerce, for linen was the staple fabric for 
clothing of all the ancient peoples. Pieces 
of linen are still found clinging to skeletons 
in the tombs of the Chaldeans, and it was 
the national dress of the Babylonians and 
Persians. All who are familiar with the 
10 



THE SPINNING-WHEEL 

Bible know the importance accorded to flax 
and the flax-spinner among the Hebrews. 
Joseph did not need to go to Pharaoh to be 
clothed "in vestures of fine linen," if the 
women of his time were as deft at spinning 
as those women of a later day who brought 
their offerings to the furnishing of the taber- 
nacle in the wilderness. " All the women 
that were wise-hearted did spin with their 
hands, and brought that which they had 
spun, both of blue and of purple and of scar- 
let and of fine linen. And all the women 
whose heart stirred them up in wisdom spun 
goat's hair;" "wise-hearted," because in 
them " the Lord put wisdom and under- 
standing to know how to work all manner 
of work for the service of the sanctuary" — 
guided in their handiwork by the spirit of 
God, which fills not only poet and prophet, 
but artist and artisan as well. What a hum 
there must have been in the Israelitish camp 
as the women set hands to the spindle and 
took up the distaff, and the sound of many 
feet went through the tents, as they walked 
back and forth, pulling out the long threads 
that were to hang in beautiful fabrics of 

11 



THE TALE OF 

embroidered woollen and linen cloth around 
about the tabernacle! "Thou shalt make 
the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine 
twined linen. . . . The length of one cur- 
tain shall be eight and twenty cubits, and 
the breadth of one curtain four cubits ; And 
thou shalt make curtains of goats' hair to 
be a covering upon the tabernacle : eleven 
curtains shalt thou make. The length of 
one curtain shall be thirty cubits, and the 
breadth of one curtain four cubits." A 
hanging for the door was also made of 
" fine twined linen." A cubit was about 
one and eight tenths of a foot : the amount 
of laborious spinning represented by those 
curtains will be better understood when 
we see later on the slowness of the pro- 
cess ; and yet so much was sent in that 
Moses was obliged to give commandment, 
saying, " Let neither man nor woman make 
any more work for the offering of the 
sanctuary." Thus the Hebrew sanctuary 
of God, the sacred place of the ark, was 
built up, in this fifteenth century before 
Christ, on the foundations of woman's 
labor. 

12 



THE SPINNING-WHEEL 



Let us turn for a moment to Greece. 
Once more we find woman's handiwork 
holding an honorable place, for the patron 
goddess of spinning, weaving, and needle- 
work is none other than Pallas Athene, the 
warrior goddess of wisdom, founder and 
protector of Athens, and herself 
a spinner acknowledging no rival 
among gods or men. Who does 
not know how the full fury of her 
godhead was let loose upon the 
luckless Arachne, that mortal wo- 
man who dared challenge her to a 
competition in spinning and weav- 
ing ? Overhearing Arachne' s boast 
that not even Pallas Athene herself 
could surpass the beauty of her handiwork, 
and that she would try her skill with the 
goddess, or suffer the penalty of defeat, the 
wrathful divinity assumed the form of an old 
woman, and tried to induce the reckless girl 
to desist. Arachne persisted in her defiance, 
even when the goddess revealed herself in 
all her majesty. They then proceeded to 
the competition. Ovid tells us how they 
wrought, each surpassing the other in the 

13 





ARACHNE 
* ^ 



THE TALE OF 

wonderful living pictures woven into the 
web, until at last the insulted goddess shat- 
tered the mortal's loom to atoms, and re- 
vealed to Arachne the full extent of her 
impiety. Unable to endure the thought of 
her guilt and shame, she hanged herself 
forthwith. The goddess pitied her as she 
hung, and touching her said: "Live: and 
that you may preserve the memory of this 
lesson, continue to hang, both you and your 
descendants, to all future times." To this 
day the spider, Nature's busy spinner, bears 
witness to her fate, and to the outraged 
dignity of the goddess who thus honored the 
spinster's art by competing therein with a 
mortal. Surely the much abused epithet of 
"spinster" is entitled to respect, more es- 
pecially as this divine spinster honored also 
the unmarried state in choosing ever to 
" pursue her maiden meditations fancy 
free." 

Thus does Theocritus apostrophize the 
distaff: — 

" distaff, practised in wool-spinning, gift of the 
blue-eyed Minerva, 

14 



THE SPINNING-WHEEL 

Labor at thee is fitting to wives who seek the 

good of their husbands ! 
Trustfully come thou with me to the far famous 

city of Neleus, 

So that, distaff of ivory cunningly fashioned, I 
give thee 

Into the hands of the wife of Nicias, the skilled 
and the learned ! 

So shalt thou weave mantles for men and trans- 
parent tissues for women. 

And at the sight, O my distaflf, shall one woman 

say to another: 
Surely great grace lies in trifles, and gifts from 

friends are most precious ! " 

This recalls Alcandra's gift of a golden 
distaff to Helen of Troy ; and an interesting 
companion picture to these ancient Greeks 
is our own Benjamin Franklin, who thus 
presents a spinning-wheel to his sister in 
a letter dated Jan. 6, 1736 : — 

"Dear Sister, — I am highly pleased 
with the account Captain Freeman gives me 
of you. I always judged from your behavior 
when a child, that you would make a good, 

15 



THE TALE OF 

agreeable woman, and you know you were 
ever my peculiar favorite. I have been 
thinking what would be a suitable present 
for me to make, and for you to receive, as I 
hear you are grown a celebrated beauty. 
I had almost determined on a tea-table ; 
but when I consider that the character of a 
good house-wife was far preferable to that 
of only being a pretty gentlewoman, I con- 
cluded to send you a spinning-wheel, which 
I hope you will accept as a small token of 
my sincere love and affection. Sister, fare- 
well, and remember that modesty, as it 
makes the most homely virgin amiable and 
charming, so the want of it infallibly renders 
the most perfect beauty disagreeable and 
odious. But when that brightest of female 
virtues shines among other perfections of 
body and mind, in the same person, it makes 
the woman more lovely than an angel. 
Excuse this freedom and use the same with 
me. I am, dear Jenny, 

" Your loving brother, 

"B. Franklin." 

Compare Franklin's sentiments empha- 
sized still further in Poor Richard's 
Almanac : — 

16 



THE SPINNING-WHEEL 

" Old England's Laws the proudest Beauty name 
When single Spinster, and when married Dame, 
For Housewifery is Woman's noblest Fame. 
The wisest household Cares to Women yield 
A large, an useful and a grateful Field." 

Fancy the horror which would congeal 
the soul of Poor Richard to-day at the 
sight of woman stepping boldly outside that 
"large Field " of the kitchen and spinning- 
room! In the eyes of both Greek and 
American, the woman plying spindle and 
distaff was more nobly and graciously em- 
ployed than the spoiled beauty gossiping 
over the teacups, for, says Richard, — 

" Many estates are spoiled in the getting, 
Since women for tea forsook spinning and knitting." 

Nor should we forget the august Fates 
themselves, who spin the thread of human 
destiny, weaving it into the web of universal 
life, and cutting here and there a thread as 
each mortal fulfils his allotted hour, — 

" And sing to those who hold the vital shears, 
And turn the adamantine spindle round, 
On which the fate of gods and men is wound." 
2 17 



THE TALE OF 

Here we see the spindle as the emblem of 
human destiny, and always in the hands of 
women. Witness the three Norns, likewise, 
of our own northern ancestors, who sit 
around the tree Igdrasil and spin out the 
world's life on their whirring spindle. 

If we ask more we need only turn to 
Homer, the inimitable reflector of the cus- 
toms of his day. In his verse the spinner 
lives again, as she spins the fine white linen 
and gorgeous colored wool. Beautiful are 
the pictures she weaves into the cloth, 
stories of gods and demi-gods and heroes. 
Odysseus, entering the feasting hall of the 
Phseacians, is transfixed with wonder at 
its splendor ; its seats, throughout all their 
length, were spread with the marvellous 
work of the Phseacian maidens, showing 
radiant in the torchlight, for the Phseacian 
women far exceeded all others in this house- 
hold art. Did not the Phseacian queen 
recognize on Odysseus the very garments 
she herself and her maidens had made? 
And all the while loyal-hearted Penelope 
sat at home and wove her web to keep off 
suitors, not to catch them, though Shake- 

18 



THE SPINNING-WHEEL 

speare rather sneeringly remarks that " all 
the yarn she spun in Ulysses' absence did 
but fill Ithaca full of moths." Evidently 
spinning and the making of the household 
garments were not beneath the dignity 
of royal fingers in those old Greek days, 
dueenly indeed were these occupations, 
and right royal these distaffs of ivory and 
gold, the gifts of kings and poets, the sym- 
bols of woman's dominion. Was not the 
wool basket even of Helen of Troy lipped 
with gold ? And in the excavations on the 
site of Troy to-day are found innumerable 
spindle- whorls of terra-cotta ; and in the later 
excavations Dr. Schliemann found, twenty- 
eight feet below the surface in the Royal 
Mansion, a distaff* eleven inches long to 
which a quantity of blackened woollen thread 
was still adhering. In those days of war 
and pillage the garments a man wore were 
the best tokens of his identity ; the handi- 
work of the matron and her daughters was 
an individual seal set, as it were, upon the 
lives of their male relatives ; home-made and 
home-spun were their garments, not turned 
out by the dozen, ready-made from a factory. 

19 



THE TALE OF 

Penelope sees through the wiles of the false 
Odysseus when he describes the garments 
she had made for the real one. This cus- 
tom of the matron weaving the household 
cloth has thus given the Greek poets a 
favorite means of recognition of lost rela- 
tives which is certainly more poetic than 
the worn-out device of the " strawberry- 
mark" on the "long-lost brother." Even 
the water nymphs practise weaving ; Circe 
also, and Calypso ; mortals and immortals ; 
yea, the mighty Hercules himself threw down 
his club and spun for love of Omphale : 
thus do Greek mythology and literature 
reflect the importance of spindle and dis- 
taff in the home-life of the Greeks, who, 
as we have learned, recognized the value 
and the dignity of woman's labor in believ- 
ing it to be under the particular tutelage 
and protection of the dread daughter of 
Zeus. 

The Romans copied the Greeks in this 
as in many other things. They borrowed 
the spinster-goddess outright and called 
her Minerva to hide the plagiarism. Our 
friend Poor Richard says : 
20 * 



THE SPINNING-WHEEL 

" When great Augustus ruled the World and Rome, 
The Cloth he wore was spun and wove at Home, 
His EMPRESS ply'd the Distaff and the Loom." 

Richard is borne out by another authority, 
who states that " Caesar Augustus wore 
clothes made by his wife or daughter." 
The hapless Lucretia, wife of Collatinus, 
Tarquin's nephew, and Consul of Rome 
in 509 b. c, "was found spinning when 
her husband visited her from the camp." 
Gracious pictures these, of haughty Ro- 
man matrons, wives of consuls and emper- 
ors, spinning and weaving their husbands' 
togas. It is not often that we get such 
cosy and homelike thoughts of Rome, 
whose very name recalls naught but flash- 
ing legions and the clash of swords on 
brass. 

And the women of the north, where the 
family was the unit of society and the vil- 
lage was a cluster of homesteads knit to- 
gether by the ties of kindred — was the 
spinning-wheel heard in this land of our 
own ancestors? In the poetic diction of 
the Norsemen, with its expressive double 
substantives, we find that the maiden is 
21 



THE TALE OF 

called the "linen-folded," that is, she who 
is clothed or draped in linen. In the saga 
called " Gunnlaug the Worm-tongue," it 
is written : 

" Dead in mine arms she droopeth, 
My dear one, gold-ring's bearer ; 
For God hath changed the life-days 
Of this lady of the linen." 

She who was folded in linen was the maker 
of that linen ; and the beautiful flowing 
draperies of Norse and Saxon women and 
the tunics of the men are as true witnesses 
to their homely occupations as the drapery 
of the Greeks. Was it not the doom of the 
warrior maiden Brynhild, the disobedient 
Valkyr, to become a woman and sit by the 
fire and spin ? For the rough nature of the 
North revolted from feminine occupations, 
and this warrior daughter of Wotan saw in 
spinning only deep humiliation and disgrace. 
Thus the ancient northern literature is also 
full of pictures of the women spinning their 
household linen, spinning their wedding 
linen, spinning the linen of husbands and 
sons. Noble ladies in the halls of earl 



THE SPINNING-WHEEL 

and thane, wives in the lowlier homes of 
simple freemen, and in the cots of peasant 
and thrall — they all spun and wove for the 
needs of the home. What music-lover can 
ever forget Wagner's picture of the north- 
ern maids of later days assembled in a spin- 
ning-bee to spin the wedding linen for one 
of their number? The merry hum of the 
wheels so exquisitely copied by orchestra 
and chorus, interrupted now and then by 
Senta's plaintive song of the supernatural 
lover who has drawn her thoughts away 
from her betrothed, — surely this spinning- 
chorus from the "Flying Dutchman" will 
live as long as music lives, and will remain 
a representative instance of this beautiful 
northern custom. 

Again, in the rush-strewn hall of medi- 
seval knight or baron hung with tapestry, 
the work of his lady and her dependants, 
depicting his deeds and those of his an- 
cestors, we read the same tale of the spin- 
ning-wheel and distaff with its allied arts 
of weaving and embroidery. 

Nay, did she not write history, too, this 
noble spinster, with her spindle and loom, 
23 



THE TALE OF 

" Who, as she plied the distaff, 
In a sweet voice and low, 
Still sang of noble houses, 
And fights fought long ago " ? 



As Helen embroidered the combats of 
Greeks and Trojans, so now, two thousand 
years later, Queen Ma- 
tilda and her maidens 
are seen spinning and 
weaving the Norman 
Conquest of England 
into the Bayeux Tapes- 
try. Surely the muse 
Troops for the \msrn ot ErqloM.from £i io m Jaht wield spin- 

the Bcweux Trottta* ° A r . 

; *■ ale as well as stylus 

as a symbol of her 
patronage of history. It was no shame to 
those high-born women to ply the distaff 
and figure in the songs of chivalry as the 
makers of all manner of household fabrics. 



" My love to fight the Saxon goes, 
And bravely shines his sword of steel ; 
A heron's feather decks his brows, 
And a spur on either heel ; 

24, 




THE SPINNING-WHEEL 

His steed is blacker than a sloe, 
And fleeter than the falling star ; 
Amid the surging ranks he '11 go 
And shout for joy of war. 

" Twinkle, twinkle, pretty spindle, 

Let the white wool drift and dwindle ; 
Oh ! we weave a damask doublet 

For my love's coat of steel. 
Hark ! the timid turning treadle 

Crooning soft old-fashioned ditties, 
To the low, slow murmur of the 

Brown, round wheel." 

So sang an Irish maid of long ago, and 
to-day we still look to Ireland for some 
of the finest spinning and weaving in ex- 
istence. 

It would be trite to refer to Margaret, 
dreaming of Faust over her spinning, were 
she not eminently typical. What maiden 
of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries did 
not sit in the garden idly spinning her al- 
lotted tasks while her thoughts were far 
away? It is a picture based on fact, as 
all great literary pictures are. 

But our own immediate foremothers 
beckon us, and we must linger no longer 
25 



THE TALE OF 




26 



THE SPINNING-WHEEL 

in ancient times and foreign lands. What 
have the spinning-wheels here to tell us, as 
they lie gathering the dust of a century 
in some old musty garret — though an irate 
New England house-wife might declare 
that not even the dust of a week ever gath- 
ered in her garret — or are brought down 
to the "best parlor," where they stand in 
honorable retirement tied up with ribbon? 
We know that at least every other one 
of them must have "come over" in the 
Mayflower, else how could so many yarns 
have been spun regarding the capacity 
of our ancestral ship? Here is a wool- 
wheel 1 (see illustration), not so old as many 
others, perhaps, but all the more interesting 
for that, inasmuch as it proves how re- 
cently the real old homespun held its place 
amongst us. This wheel is a little out 
of the common. It was made by one 
William Hopkins, a resident of Litchfield, 
for his daughter, Nicy Melinda, about 1825. 
William Hopkins was a direct descendant 
of Joseph Harris, one of Litchfield's pio- 
neers, who fell a victim to the tomahawk 

i Owned by the Litchfield Historical Society. 

27 



THE TALE OF 

on Harris Plains in 1723. He had married 
Mary Hopkins of West Hartford, and lived 
just below the Symington Cottage. His 
daughter Abigail married a cousin Asa 
Hopkins, and their son Harris married 
Margaret Peck, sister of Paul Peck, " the 
mighty hunter," and became the father of 
William Hopkins of the spinning-wheel. 
William was a clever mechanic, and made 
this wheel to suit Nicy's particular fancy. 
It has two heads instead of one, — a new 
and an old fashioned one, — and the edge of 
the wheel is narrow and has a little groove 
in it instead of being broad and flat. Nicy 
Melinda married John A. Woodruff, and 
lived on a farm this side of the Town-house 
first ; then they sold out there and came 
into Litchfield, where they took up a resi- 
dence on West Street. She died in 1888. 
She was Woodruff's second wife, and her 
step-daughter, Mrs. Abbie M. Woodruff 
Newcomb, has loaned to the Litchfield 
Historical Society a collection of linen 
spun and woven by her. It consists of 
sheets, pillow-slips, as they were called, and 
table-cloths ; and there is also a red broad- 
28 



THE SPINNING-WHEEL 

cloth cloak entirely home-made. Her reel 
is also still in existence, and has been pre- 
sented to this Society. The illustration 
shows the marking on the linen worked by 
her in black sewing-silk, the fine threads 
being counted at every stitch. Think of 



so i. 

the labor represented by every inch of this 
linen, whose sheen is hardly surpassed by 
the finest silk or satin, made on a lonely 
Connecticut farm by a busy woman, for 
whom it was only one of innumerable other 
tasks. Perhaps we had best pause here to 
outline this process of linen manufacture, 
that we may the better understand what the 
work of women like Nicy Melinda meant to 
our country in her time, but more partic- 
ularly in the earlier times of the colonies 
and the Revolution. In speaking of the 
29 



THE TALE OF 

patriotic devotion of the men in our war 
for independence, of their bravery in battle, 
their dignity and wisdom in the council- 
hall, their patient endurance of every hard- 
ship and privation, we must not forget that 
their ability to meet these demands and to 
be what they were, was due to the inde- 
pendence of their homes of every outside 
help in supplying the necessaries of life, 
and this independence was due solely to 
the patient industry, the unceasing and volu- 
minous manual labor of our grandmothers 
from their earliest childhood to their death. 
Every home farm supplied its own food and 
drink, medicine, fuel, lighting, clothing, and 
shelter. The very term "linen" as em- 
ployed by our ancestors, meant the home- 
made article, "holland" always signifying 
that which was imported. Almost every 
article, in short, of household use and con- 
sumption was home-made, and home-made 
by the women. Women's hands made all 
the supplies of soap and candles ; they dis- 
tilled all the medicines from the herbs of 
the field ; they stocked the larder with pies 
and pickles, jams and jellies and preserves ; 
30 



THE SPINNING-WHEEL 

they brewed the mead and metheglin, and 
all other household drinks ; they churned 
the butter and made the cheese ; they ran 
bullets, as we very well know in Litchfield, 
where the leaden statue of George III., 
torn down from the Bowling Green, New 
York, and hurried thither, was melted by 
Litchfield's patriot women in the back or- 
chard of Oliver Wolcott ; and lastly, they 
spun into thread and yarn the flax and 
wool that was raised on the farm, and then 
knitted every pair of stockings and mittens, 
wove every inch of linen and woolen cloth, 
and cut and made every stitch of clothing 
worn by a family which generally num- 
bered ten or a dozen Johns and Hezekiahs 
and Josiahs and Hepzibahs and Mehitable 
Anns. No wonder a man could go to the 
war for his country's independence, when 
he left Independence herself at home in the 
person of his wife. 

No properly brought up maiden of those 
days would think herself prepared to marry 
until she had collected in her " linen-chest" 
all the necessaries of housekeeping spun, 
and often woven, by herself, besides all 
31 



THE TALE OF 

things necessary to complete her trousseau. 
Ten pairs of linen sheets at least she must 
have, and she must " knit a pillow-slip full 
of stockings " before she could even think 
of the happy event. Thus the time of a 
young girl was largely used in spinning her 
own wedding outfit, — whether rich or poor, 
it made no difference. The wealthiest spun 
with the poorest, and you will find the 
spinning-wheel of both kinds in the musty 
old inventories of estates of every value, 
and in the " setting-out " of every bride, 
whether she left a farmer's lonely home- 
stead, or the proud colonial mansion of the 
well-to-do ; the millionaire was an unknown 
species then. 

Let us now see how much work there 
was in this spinning, which was only one 
of those numberless other things our grand- 
mothers had to do. 

Flax was sown in May, and when the 
plants were three or four inches high, they 
were weeded by the women and children, 
walking barefoot on account of the tender 
stalks. At the end of June, or in July, it 
was pulled up very carefully by the roots 
32 



THE SPINNING-WHEEL 

by men and boys and laid out to dry, being 
turned several times in the sun : this oper- 
ation was called "pulling and spreading.'* 
Then came the "rippling," a process by 
which the stalks of flax were drawn with 
a quick stroke through an iron wire comb 



X7~T 




<«lt|IHETCHEU|]jJ> 

with coarse teeth : this broke off the seed- 
bolls, which were caught in a sheet and 
saved for the next year's crop. The flax 
was still in the field, where it was now tied 
in bundles, called "beats" or "bates," 
and stacked in a tent-shaped stack called a 
"stook." When the stacks were dry they 
were again treated with water to rot the 
leaves. This was called "retting;" the 
bates of flax were piled in running water 
in a solid heap, and left for about five days, 
when they were taken up and the rotting 
leaves removed. When cleaned and dried 
3 33 



THE TALE OF 




WALL 
HETCHEl 




the flax was once more tied in bundles. 
It was then broken by men on the great 
flax-brake in order to separate the fibres 
and get out from the centre the hard, woody 
" hexe " or "bun." This clumsy instru- 
ment need not be described here, further 
than to say that a heavy beam set with 
slats, hinged to an under beam also set 
with slats corresponding to the intervals of 
the upper one, was weighted and allowed to 
fall on the flax laid in between. The flax 
was usually broken twice, then " scutched " 
or " swingled " with a swingling block 
and knife to remove any remaining bits of 
bark. The clean fibres were then made 
into bundles called "strikes," which were 
swingled again, the refuse from the pro- 
cess being used for coarse bagging. The 
"strikes" were sometimes "beetled," or 
pounded in a wooden trough over and over 
until soft. The flax was now ready for the 
process of hackling or hetcheling, which 
required great dexterity on the part of the 
hetcheler. The flax fibres were carefully 
drawn towards the hetcheler through the 
teeth of the hetchel (see illustrations, pages 
34 



THE SPINNING-WHEEL 



33 and 34, taken from originals in the Litch- 
field Historical Society), thus pulling out 
the fibres into long continuous threads and 
combing out the shorter threads. This im- 
plement has given its name to that process 
of "heckling" so familiar, for instance, 
to hen-pecked husbands when lectured by 
irate wives. Our inelegant but expressive 
modern slang would say she " combed him 
down." These are the " combs " she would 
use, figuratively at least, if not actually. 

After the first hackle, six other finer ones 
were frequently applied, and the amount of 
good fibre left after all this hackling, even 
from a huge mass of raw material, was 
very small; but a very 
large quantity of linen 
thread could be spun from 
this small amount. The 
fibres were then sorted 
according to fineness by a 
process called "spreading 
and drawing." Now at 
last the flax was ready 
for the wheel, and was 
wrapped around the dis- 
35 




Wiman with hpfclwl 

IJ- century 



THE TALE OF 



taff; the spinner seated herself at this fa- 
miliar implement and spun out a long, even 
thread from the mass of fibre on the distaff. 
This thread she wound on bobbins as she 
spun it, and when the bobbins were full, 
she wound it off on a reel into knots and 
skeins. This was the clock-reel, which 
ticked when a certain number of strands 
had been wound in a " knot " ; then the 
spinner would pause and tie the knot, and 
if at that moment some ardent admirer 
were watching this pretty and graceful oc- 
cupation, it is not at all likely that the busy 
spinster could escape a more tangible proof 
of his admiration, for it is written that " He 
kissed Mistress Polly when the clock-reel 
ticked." 

Doubtless John Alden 
improved his opportuni- 
ties when he was told to 
speak for himself; at 
least, let us hope that 
Priscilla did not have to 
hint about everything. 

It was a good day's 
work to spin two skeins 
36 



clock: keel 




THE SPINNING-WHEEL 

of twenty knots each, every knot having 
usually forty threads. For this work a 
woman earned eight cents a day and her 
keep. In the valley of Wyoming, where 
so many Connecticut families emigrated to 
meet their terrible doom later on at the 
hands of the Indians, a woman was paid six 
shillings a week for her labor at spinning. 

Before the threads could be woven they 
had still to pass through a long and labori- 
ous process of bleaching by soaking them 
in many waters, then with hot water and 
ashes over and over again, then in clear 
water again for a week, then a final seeth- 
ing, rinsing, beating, washing, drying, and 
winding on bobbins, when they were at last 
ready for the loom. 

Such was the far from simple process 
of flax-culture and spinning on the farm: 
when we remember that wool culture and 
spinning was scarcely less laborious, and 
that the home weaving of both kinds of 
thread has not yet been taken into the 
account, we shall begin to realize what 
it meant to the women of '76 when they 
voluntarily took oath to wear naught but 
37 



THE TALE OF 

homespun, they and their sons and their 
daughters. 

But there was much social enjoyment in 
it too, and much interest excited by the 
offering of prizes to efficient and rapid spin- 
sters. It was not unusual for a woman 
in those days to tuck her baby under one 
arm, tie her wheel behind her, and trot off 
on horseback to spend the day in spinning 
with a neighbor. Many a well-to-do matron 
" had a touch so skilful that she could 
spin two threads, one in each hand, while 
she kept the treadle of her flax-wheel mov- 
ing with her foot, held the baby asleep 
across her knees, and talked with her vis- 
itors." Or, when weather permitted, "the 
wide hospitable door would be thrown open, 
and the thrifty house-wife in afternoon dress 
of mull or ' taffety ' and a fine cambric 
apron, would step back and forth before 
the great wool-wheel set in the space- 
way spinning fine yarn while neighbors 
dropped in." 

Speaking of two-handed wheels, I find the 
following quaint advertisement in the Hart- 
ford " Courant " for January 5, 1801 : — 
38 



THE SPINNING-WHEEL 

"All kinds of Spinning Wheels and 
Reels made and repaired by Joel Bald- 
win of Bristol living on the road from 
Cambridge Meeting-House to Farmington. 

" JV. B. Two handed wheels are highly 
recommended to young Women, as they 
can spin one third faster on them. 

"Bristol, Dec. 15." 

And then the spinning-bees and spinning 
classes — the sewing circles of those days. 
Both Connecticut and Massachusetts as 
early as 1640 took legal steps to encourage 
the culture and spinning of flax, and every 
family was ordered to spin a certain amount 
of flax a year on penalty of a fine, and often 
prizes were offered for quantity and quality. 
On Boston Common the spinsters would 
sometimes meet with their wheels, and sit 
them down to spin — rich and poor alike, to 
the number, once, of three hundred. Think 
you the haughty spinsters of Boston would 
do the like to-day ? On one occasion they 
were preached to by the minister in a long 
and profitable sermon, and a collection of 
£453 was taken up. This most edifying 
event took place in 1754. 
39 



THE TALE OF 

Sermons and spinning evidently went 
hand in hand, for I find in the Litchfield 
"Monitor" for May 16, 1798, the follow- 
ing item of news : — 

" South Farms, May 7. 

" On Wednesday, the 2d instant visited 
at the house of the Rev. Amos Chase, about 
60 of his female friends parishioners : — 
Who made the very acceptable presenta- 
tion of seventy run of Yarn to his family. 
In the course of the decent and cordial 
socialties of the afternoon, the ladies were 
entertained by their Pastor with a sermon 
adapted to the occasion, — from these words, 
Gen. xxxi. 43, " What can I do, this day, 
unto these my daughters ? ' ' 

From an address by the Rev. Grant 
Powers on the occasion of the centennial 
anniversary of the town of Goshen, Con- 
necticut, in 1838, I quote the following 
account of a great spinning-match among 
the ladies about 1772: — 

" There arose a spinning -match, among 
the young married ladies, at the house of 
Nehemiah Lewis. . . . The trial was at the 
40 



THE SPINNING-WHEEL 

foot-wheel in spinning linen. The con- 
ditions were previously denned and agreed 
to, viz. : They might spin during the whole 
twenty-four hours if they chose. They 
were to have their distaffs prepared for them, 
and their yarn reeled by others. Upon the 
first trial at Lews' house many did well. 
The wife of Stephen Tuttle spun five runs, 
which were equal to two and a half days' 
labour when on hire. Several others spun 
four runs each ; but Mrs. Tuttle came off 
victor. But this aroused the ambition of 
some of the unmarried ladies, and Lydia 
Beach, the daughter of Dea. Edmund 
Beach, of East-street, was the first to 
come forward and take up the gauntlet. 
She spun from early dawn to nine o'clock 
in the evening. She had her distaffs pre- 
pared, her yarn reeled, and her food put 
into her mouth. She spun in this time 
seven runs, three and a half days' labour, 
and took the wreath from the brow of Mrs. 
Tuttle." 

Mr. Powers adds in a foot-note, 

" Some of our Matrons say that ten runs 
were a week's labour ; if so Miss Lydia 
performed the labour of four days and one- 
fifth of a day in one day." 
41 



THE TALE OF 

" Upon hearing of the exploit of Miss 
Beach [he continues in his address] the 
wife of Capt. Isaac Pratt, of the South 
part of the town, came upon the arena. 
Between early dawn and the setting of the 
sun, she had actually spun six runs, but 
at this moment her husband interfered, and 
peremptorily forbade her proceeding further. 
She sat down, and wept like a child, when 
she ought to have rejoiced, that she pos- 
sessed a husband, in whose eyes her future 
health and happiness were more precious, 
than the brief applause which might arise 
from success in that contest." 

He goes on to say that Lydia Beach be- 
came the wife of Jesse Buel, son of Capt. 
Jonathan Buel, " while her garland was 
yet fresh upon her brow ; but the doating 
husband was destined to see it wither down 
to the grave, for Lydia never enjoyed health 
from the hour of her triumph." 

From this it is evident that the spinning- 
wheel as well as the sewing-machine has 
had its victims. It was well for these toil- 
ing women of the pioneer towns if they had 
husbands thoughtful enough to stop in time 
the self-sacrifice of daily labor at the wheel, 
42 



THE SPINNING-WHEEL 

as well as in this spinning- match for glory 
only. Of such pious women Chaucer could 
scarcely have said : — 

" Deceite, weepynge, spynnynge, God hath give 
To wymmen kyndely that they may live." 

For not only did these women live, but also 
their families and their country because of 
their spinning. 

The Stamp Act year was drawing on, 
and the storm of indignation was beginning 
to rumble in the distance, soon to burst like 
a tornado on England's commerce with her 
colonies. From Massachusetts to South 
Carolina the colonies were alive with patri- 
otic societies of women called " Daughters 
of Liberty," who banded themselves to- 
gether with the agreement to drink no tea, 
and wear only what their own hands could 
spin and weave. Among the Daughters of 
Stratford, Connecticut, were two children 
of a Tory father, of the elder of whom it is 
written, " that having lost her thimble she 
would not buy another, as it would be an 
imported article ; and Polly, the little sister, 
scorning an English needle, learned to sew 
43 



THE TALE OF 

with a thorn." Think of that, all ye modern 
women to whom sewing is enough of a 
" thorn " in itself without using another to 
sew with. 

Everywhere these Daughters met together 
to spin, once to the number of seventy in 
one place. In Rowley, Massachusetts, 
" thirty-three respectable ladies," as the 
story runs, " met at sunrise with their 
wheels to spend the day at the house of the 
Reverend Jedediah Jewell, in the laudable 
design of a spinning-match." Of course 
the Rev. Jedediah preached to them ; but 
they were also given bodily sustenance in 
the form of a " polite and generous re- 
past." All honor to these Daughters of 
the olden time whose spinning-wheels did 
surely spin out their country's glorious des- 
tiny ! " Q,ueens of Homespun," Horace 
Bushnell called such women, " out of whom 
we draw our royal lineage." And to- 
day, another patriotic society of forty thou- 
sand modern Daughters, their descendants, 
have surely honored themselves in choosing 
for their insignia this very spinning-wheel 
and distaff, this symbol of their grand- 



THE SPINNING-WHEEL 

mother's toil and self-sacrifice and patriot- 
ism ; for in that little emblem are embodied 
all the blood and tears, the sorrow, the 
rejoicing, and the patient, steadfast labor 
of the women of the American Revolu- 
tion. The Rev. Mr. Powers in his cen- 
tennial address, after eulogizing the men, 
thus speaks of these patriot women of our 
land : — 

" Nor do we speak of these men only, 
but their mothers^, their wives and their 
daughters were like them. . . . They sus- 
tained their full share in all the trials and 
dangers of the Ocean, of the wilderness, 
and of war ! Their courage in times of 
peril, and their fortitude in trials never for- 
sook them ! They gave up their husbands 
and their sons for the cause of God and 
their country, and their example was all 
powerful. And this was true, not only 
of Pilgrim women, but of women in the 
Revolution. This town possessed them. 
I will give one instance of this that it may 
be a memorial of her. Abraham Parmele 
was a warm patriot in the Revolution . . . 
but in this it is said, he was thrown into the 
shade by the patriotism of his wife Mary 
45 



THE TALE OF 

Stanley that was. She was fixed in the 
righteousness of the cause of the colonies, 
and when war broke out, she said they 
would prevail ! She said she could pray 
for the cause of America ; and not in the 
darkest period of the conflict, when many 
faces were pale, and many hands were on 
their loins, did this woman's confidence fail 
her in the least, — and her actions corre- 
sponded with her words. Four different 
times did she fit out her own son Theodore 
for the battlefield, and gave him her parting 
blessing ; and with her own hands did she 
make five soldiers' blankets, not to sell, but 
sent them a present to the poor soldiers, who, 
after the battles of the day, had neither 
bed nor covering for the night. Could 
soldiers thus sustained ever relinquish the 
cause of their country? Never ! " 

In Townsend, Massachusetts, it is said 
that " a devoted mother and her daughters 
did in a day and a night shear a black and a 
white sheep, card from the fleece a gray wool, 
spin, weave, cut, and make a suit of clothes 
for the boy whom they were sending off to 
fight for liberty." W. J. Stillman in his 
Autobiography tells of a similar instance 
46 



THE SPINNING-WHEEL 

occurring in the pastor's family in Newport, 
Rhode Island, in whose home his mother grew 
up. Coming from such homes as these, no 
wonder that the boys of '76 won that fight. 

But New England was not alone in her 
encouragement of flax and wool culture. 
Virginia, where wild flax grew in profu- 
sion, was even earlier than Massachusetts 
in arousing an interest in flax- spinning. In 
1646, two spinning-schools were established 
in Jamestown, and prizes were offered for 
the best work, until the whole colony was en- 
gaged in this home industry. Every great 
and little plantation had its spinning-house, 
where the female slaves were kept busily 
spinning, the mistress herself joining in the 
work. We are of course reminded of the 
spinning-house at Mount Vernon, where 
" Lady " Washington marshalled her dusky 
spinners. It is said that she ravelled and 
dyed her old silk gowns and silk scraps, and 
had them woven into chair-covers. Some- 
times she did the reverse, weaving a dress 
for herself out of ravelled cushions and the 
General's old silk stockings. 

Madame Pinckney, another dame of high 
47 



THE TALE OF 

degree, was actively instrumental in start- 
ing the flax industries of South Carolina. 

The German settlers of Germantown were 
also great flax-growers, as attested by their 
town-seal, the device of their leader, Father 
Pastorius. And what we now know as 




" Germantown " still testifies to their pro- 
ficiency in the wool industries. 

The wives and daughters of the Swedish 
colony, as early as 1673, employed them- 
selves in spinning wool and flax, and many 
in weaving ; and the excellence shown by 
the wool and flax workers of New York oc- 
casioned uneasiness in the mother-country, 
which rightly saw in it the possible inde- 
pendence of the colonies of all English 
cloth and clothing. 

The production and manufacture of cotton 
was not taken up in this country until 1770, 
48 



THE SPINNING-WHEEL 

three years after the invention of the spin- 
ning-jenny by Hargreaves. Cotton, in the 
earliest times, was spun like flax, first on 
the hand-distaff, and then 
on a wheel like the flax- 
wheel. For some time 
after its introduction into 
this country, it was far 
more expensive, and con- 
sidered more of a lux- 
ury, than linen. It was 
called by the East In- 
dian name of " hum- 
hum." A work-pocket 
in the Litchfield His- 
torical Society (see 
illustration) contains 
a piece of the first 
cotton cloth made in 
America. The pocket 
is large and was worn 
at the side, evidently to hold flax in while 
spinning, for some flax still remains in it. 
The growing and spinning of cotton cannot, 
however, be counted among the truly colo- 
nial industries. 

4 49 




P ATCHWORK POCKE T 

f 



THE TALE OF 

The Stamp Act soon stirred all patri- 
otic Philadelphians to the resolve to eat no 
"meat of the mutton kind," — a resolve 
rendered still more stern in 1775. A wool- 
factory was fitted up, and, to quote Mrs. 
Alice Morse Earle, 1 " an appeal was made 
to the women to save the state. In a 
month four hundred wool-spinners were at 
work." In the same year the Provincial 
Congress made an appeal to the people for 
thirteen thousand warm coats for the Con- 
tinental army, to be ready for the soldiers 
when winter came. It was a time when 
all preparations for the war seemed to be 
in the most hopeless snarl, and army sup- 
plies were scarce and often lacking. To- 
day a contractor would make nothing of the 
job, possibly in more senses than one ; but 
a hundred years ago the wool-wheels and 
hand-looms were set humming by hundreds 
of hearth-stones, and, writes Mrs. Earle 
again, " the order was filled by the handi- 
work of patriotic American women. In the 
record book of some New England towns 

1 To whose charming book, Home Life in Colonial Days, I am 
indebted for many facts relating to colonial spinning. 

50 



THE SPINNING-WHEEL 

may still be found the list of the coat- 
makers. . . . Every soldier volunteering for 
eight months' service was given one of these 
homespun, homemade, all-wool coats as a 
bounty. So highly were these ' Bounty 
Coats ' prized, that the heirs of soldiers who 
were killed at Bunker Hill before receiv- 
ing their coats were given a sum of money 
instead. The list of names of soldiers who 
then enlisted is known to this day as the 
' Coat Roll,' and the names of the women 
who made the coats might form another roll 
of honor. The English sneeringly called 
Washington's army the £ Homespuns.' " 
They little knew the power and significance 
of that title. Well did Horace Bushnell 
call it "mother and daughter power." 

Thus we see that in New England the 
culture, spinning and weaving of wool, as 
well as flax, was as religiously encouraged 
as in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and New York. 
The great wool-wheel was as necessary an 
implement in every household as the little 
flax-wheel, for every home had by law to 
contain one spinner. Children of all classes 
were required to learn to spin wool, and met 
51 



THE TALE OF 

on equal footing over their work. Home- 
spun became so universal a commodity that 
imported woolens were not missed when 
the time came to forbid them the country. 
It was a process of many months of hard 
labor to convert the raw fleece into the 
"all-wool goods a yard wide" which we 
cut up so recklessly to-day. Another old 
saying, "dyed in the wool," represents an- 
other laborious process, that of dyeing the 
wool with homemade dyes. All kinds of 
homely flowers were used for these dyes, a 
beautiful green being made from goldenrod 
mixed with indigo. Blue, made from the 
blue paper that wrapped the old sugar-loaf, 
and from indigo bought from travelling 
pedlers, was the favorite color, possibly 
because the easiest to obtain ; and the old 
blue dye-pot stood constantly in the chim- 
ney corner like the Frenchwoman's pot-au- 
feu. We cannot help wondering if the 
coats of the "Homespuns" were blue. 
And the familiar blue of the patriot army ? 
Was that also women's work ? 

After the dyeing came the carding, a very 
deft process, and also a very dirty one, for 
52 



THE SPINNING-WHEEL 



the wool had first to be rubbed with melted 
swine's grease — three pounds of grease to 
ten of wool. This process corresponded in 
purpose and method to the hetcheling of 
flax, as the wool was drawn into parallel 
fibres through bent wire teeth set in a 
leather or wooden rectangle, called a wool- 
card. Here are the wool-cards of Maria 
Tallmadge, second wife of Colonel Ben- 
jamin Tallmadge, the famous major of 
Connecticut's Second Light Dragoons, the 
friend of Lafayette and confidant of Wash- 
ington ; they belong to the valuable collec- 
tion of the Litchfield Historical Society. 
By these clumsy-looking implements the 
wool was twisted into little rolls, and was 
then ready for spinning. 

This wool-spinning called for the most 
alert and graceful series of movements, to 
which our foremothers owe in large part 
their poise and dignity of carriage. The 
little roll of wool was placed on the spindle, 
the great wheel was given a quick turn, and 
the spinner stepped quickly backward three 
or four steps, holding the twisting yarn in her 
left hand high above her head : then with a 
53 



N 



y-o* 



THE TALE OF 

quick forward movement she let it wind 
around the bobbin, and the process was 
repeated. An active spinner could spin six 
skeins a day, and to do this it is estimated 
that she walked with her backward and for- 
ward steps over twenty miles. 

Yarn was wound from the spindle on 
clock-reels, and also on hand-reels called 
"niddy-noddies." To be knitted it had 
also to be washed and cleaned. 

To spin the finest yarn was a much de- 
sired accomplishment among housewives, 
It is said that one Mistress Mary Prigge 
once spun a pound of wool into eighty-four 
thousand yards — that is, nearly forty-eight 
miles. 

All these different manipulations lasted 
many months, though they could be accom- 
plished in much shorter time ; they also 
furnished occupation for an entire family, 
from the grandmother down to the children, 
when on long winter evenings they all as- 
sembled before the kitchen fire. 

It is impossible here to go into the home 
process of weaving this wool and linen 
thread; but it was no less laborious than 
54 



THE SPINNING-WHEEL 

all that had gone before. Suffice it to say 
that in almost every house throughout New 
England, Pennsylvania, and Virginia the 
hand-loom was to be found, and every 
farmer's daughter could weave as well as 
spin, although weaving was not so wholly 
woman's work as was spinning. Homespun 



"^((WEAVERS SHUTTLES 



linen after being woven had to undergo about 
forty processes of bleaching, as it was still 
light brown in color. It was often kept out 
on the grass for weeks at a time, until at 
least sixteen months had elapsed since the 
planting of the flaxseed to the final evolu- 
tion of the finished sheet or pillow-case. 
What modern linen is as firm, solid, and 
close-woven, and capable of being used a 
hundred years hence as this can be used to- 
day ? What needle- work so fine ? One can 
hardly believe that the same hands which 
made the soap and greased the wool could 
hem like that, embroider the finest edging 
55 

LofCL, 



THE TALE OF 

and other work, make bead-bags, and knit 
the daintiest lace. All-around women they 
must have been to pass back and forth from 
the coarsest to the finest labor, and to keep 
their minds alert as well. Listen to one 
Abigail Foote's diary, in the year 1775, and 
she a young girl : — 

"Fix'd gown for Prude, — Mend Mother's 
Riding-hood, — Spun short thread, — Fix'd 
two gowns for Welsh's girls, — Carded 
tow, — Spun linen, — Worked on Cheese- 
basket, Hatchel'd flax with Hannah, we 
did 51 lbs. a-piece, — Pleated and ironed, — 
Read a sermon of Doddridge's, — Spooled 
a piece, — Milked the cows, — Spun linen, 
did 50 knots, — Made a Broom of Guinea- 
wheat straw, — Spun thread to whiten, — 
Set a Red dye, — Had two Scholars from 
Mrs. Taylor's, — I carded two pounds of 
whole wool and felt Nationly, — Spun har- 
ness twine, scoured the pewter." 

All this besides washing, cooking, weav- 
ing tape, knitting, weeding, picking geese, 
and making social visits. And yet we talk 
about modern rush and hurry, and the 
"strenuous life." It is merely a change 
56 



THE SPINNING-WHEEL 

of occupation. We hear it constantly said 
of our ancestors' fine needle- work, delicate 
hand-writing, etc., "Oh, they had more 
time to do such things." Would not Abi- 
gail Foote dispute that, think you ? Also 




Mrs. John May, a prominent Boston woman, 
who writes in her diary for one day : 

" A large kettle of yarn to attend upon. 
Lucretia and self rinse, scour through many 
waters, get out, dry, attend to, bring in, do 
up and sort 110 score of yarn ; this with 
baking and ironing. Then went to hackling 
flax." 

Now she was not an over-worked farmer's 

wife, but a city woman, the wife of a colonel. 

I do not believe they had one bit more 

time than we have. Manners and customs 

57 



THE TALE OF 

change, but this busy world was always 
busy, and it is true of all ages that "woman's 
work is never done." There are those who 
regret the disuse of these homely occupa- 
tions, saying that the home has suffered 
with the modern broadening of "woman's 
sphere." They forget that a sphere must 
round itself out on all sides, leaving the 
centre at the same point : the rounding out 
of woman's sphere leaves her centre still 
the home. And the home still centres in the 
woman; the country still centres in the 
home, and no mere change of womanly oc- 
cupation can alter God's fundamental law 
of human society. But for the comfort of 
those who would still see woman spinning 
as in the "good old times," it is worthy of 
note that in Deer Isle, Maine, the spinning- 
match is still extant. True to patriotic 
tradition, the wool-spinners there have 
formed a " Martha Washington Benevolent 
Society," which for fifty years, without a 
break, has held an annual spinning-match in 
August, twenty or more women assembling 
with their great wheels, and spinning with 
all the old-time dexterity. One of their 
58 



THE SPINNING-WHEEL 

number is one hundred and two years old, 
and during the past winter made, entirely 
without help, four large patch-work bed- 
quilts, double-bed size, and sold them at the 
sale which accompanies the match. The 
yarn which they spin through the year they 
knit into stockings and mittens for home 
use and for sale. 

In New York City lives a family who are 
now developing these homely industries to 
their full artistic limits. One of the most 
interesting exhibits in the National Exposi- 
tion of Children's Work held in March, 
1901, was a portiere entirely hand-made by 
the young son and daughter of Douglas 
Volk, the artist, in their city home. The 
wool was spun and dyed by Marian Volk 
with vegetable dyes of her own making, and 
the boy wove it on a genuine loom, one 
hundred years old, brought from the heart 
of Maine. The room in which they spin 
and weave, with its home-made rugs, 
antique chairs, and brass candlesticks, its 
spinning-wheels, clock-reel, and loom, all in 
daily use, might be taken for the " living- 
room" of an old Maine farmhouse. The 
59 



THE TALE OF 

artistic possibilities of the old spinning and 
weaving were recognized a few years ago by 
Mrs. Volk while living at Lovell, her sum- 
mer home in Maine, and she has success- 
fully established there her new industry of 
home rug-making, every process of which is 
marked with the sincerity of hand-work — 
a noble handicraft indeed. Thus this time- 
honored occupation still thrives in the East, 
while in the remote and mountainous regions 
in the South, handweaving and spinning are 
still household arts — as also in many foreign 
countries. 

But here must end the tale of the spinning- 
wheel in many ages and climes, though the 
tale is not half told. We have seen the 
centuries bear witness to the dignity of 
woman's manual labor, of which the old 
dusty spinning-wheel is as glorious a sym- 
bol as are the tattered battle-flags a token 
of the soldier's hard-fought field. Patriot- 
ism, self-devotion, sacrifice — all speak to us 
from the one and from the other. Woman's 
labor has supported the home, has filled the 
breach in war-time, has clothed the world, 
and continues to do so to-day. For though 
60 



THE SPINNING-WHEEL 

the spinning-wheel is mute, the sewing- 
machine and the factory are not, and the 
" Song of the Shirt " goes on forever. The 
Daughters of Liberty spun for their country 
in the days of '76, and they have lived again 
in every period of their country's need — in 
the Sanitary Commission, in the women's 
Red Cross Auxiliaries, in the " Dames " 
and " Daughters " of to-day. Let us thank 
God that we had such foremothers ; thank 
Him that they and the forefathers gave us a 
country of which we may still be proud; 
thank Him that their spirit is still alive in 
our midst, for as the uprising of that spirit 
drove the tyrant from our shores in 1776, so it 
has ever since arisen, and still will rise to de- 
liver our country from the perils of the hour 
— the peril from the greedy and corrupt 
politician, the perils of popular ignorance 
and luke-warm patriotism, and all other 
perils consequent upon the loss of our fore- 
fathers' ideals. May this spirit never die, 
for the day of its disappearance is the day 
of our country's doom. It is the duty and 
the privilege of our great Society to see 
that "old New England" never fails us, 
61 



TALE OF THE SPINNING-WHEEL 



for it is her spirit that has burned high in 
the breast of American womanhood from 
Bunker Hill till now, and there stands its 
witness. Honor the old spinning-wheel and 
all it signifies, and to the spinster : 

" Give her of the fruit of her hands ; 
and let her works praise her in the gates." 




FLAX 
WHEEL 



NOV 23 1903 



■■BHi 

018 374 230 9 % 



